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Archive | January 2017

If your life has unraveled enough and you are open to searching for Truth, it actually is fairly simple. Each day make time to meditate. If you haven’t done so before, I imagine some resistance may be creeping its way into your awareness. The good news is, being a novice is completely acceptable. In fact, that might even be an advantage. There won’t be as many preconceived expectations of what mediation time will look like. Expectations that go unmet often lead us away from our True Path.

The most important aspect of meditating is that you make a daily commitment to it. You only have to show up. Every. Single. Day.

It may take some time to find what allows you to connect to the space between thoughts. This could be any number of things. Relaxing music, a mantra, opening your eyes, closing your eyes, sitting with legs crossed, using religious texts and passages that resonate…basically anything that gives you permission to fully immerse yourself in the Now. It also might be helpful to know that the things that work today, may not work tomorrow. This only means you need to be open to new ways to connect to Truth.

When I first started meditating daily, I did so with a purpose. While I could feel the Truth inside me, I believed that I had to use it to make my life how I wanted. This put me under tremendous pressure and I grew to dislike meditating, especially because my life wasn’t improving. I felt like a failure.

As I have deepened my connection to Truth, I realized that Truth isn’t worried about what is going on in my personal life.

I hate that.

Instead, Truth is.

It just is.

I have stopped asking Truth for things. I only show up and connect to the Love Within Me, which is the Love That Is Within All of Us and let go of the world. This is extremely hard to do. The showing up is easy. The allowing the personal self to quiet and let go is very painful. At least it is for me at this time. I am hopeful that eventually Truth will shift me away from my attachment to the world. Meaning I will no longer rely on other people, places or things to align to my liking for me to have peace. I will hopefully learn to let the world unfold as it should, and know with all that I Am that ALL IS WELL.

Every moment of your life is Holy. If used for Truth, each moment contains direction Home. Even a seemingly mundane interaction can hold a wealth of knowledge about where you are on your path.

Are you anxious? Are you relaxed? Are you kind? Are you cranky?

When a moment angrily pushes us towards our quiet center, then we know we have struck gold.

The moments that unfurl seamlessly with love are also showing us the way. These moments mean we are aligning our compass with Truth.

I am learning the moments that are my darkest are truly a treasure trove of Light. How else would I realize that I’m holding so much judgment in my heart? I wouldn’t. I would keep on my merry way. I would continue to erroneously believe the whole world except me was responsible for how awful I feel sometimes. It never is about the other person, situation, or circumstance. It’s only me and what I bring to it. Am I bringing fear? Then I have unexamined fear in my heart. Am I bringing negative judgment? Then I have a pit of despair in my soul that I have yet to dissect.

The bad moments are sometime our most glorious.

Are you up for looking within?

Most days I’m not. The world has other ideas. It is on a continuous loop of good and bad.

The key to growth is to graciously acknowledge with a loving heart what you judge as good, and to question unabashedly anything you deem as bad. Good means the personal self is aligning with the Holy Self. This is preparing you for your eventual realization that you are always Home. Bad means that you have distorted stories of separation from Source stockpiled within your soul. Looking directly at these stories is hard work. It is soul-crushing sometimes. But that’s the point. Your soul has to be crushed before it can reconfigure to permanent alignment with Source.

Everything holds the opportunity to open to the Divine. Each day holds all that is needed to awaken.

It is important to remember enlightenment is not an instantaneous transformation. It is years of consciously choosing to be fully present over and over until it sticks. Even then, if you identify as a personal self, your work is not done. It may seem a little easier with time and practice but it isn’t over. It’s not over until it is.

There are a few that walk among us that appear farther along on their path. There truly isn’t a way to measure spiritual growth. Either you are open to Truth or you aren’t. Both are acceptable ways of being in the world. Where ever you are is perfection.

One thing that confounded me forever, was the idea that all we need to do is bring Presence to every aspect of our lives to transform it. While this is true, I grappled with the idea that something as mundane as doing laundry was TRANSFORMATIVE. Repetitive and mundane, yes,…transformative, no thank you.

The more I read about mindfulness and attempted to incorporate it into all facets of my life, the more confounded I felt. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t be peacefully attentive while doing tasks I hated (I’m still not). I started to feel like a huge spiritual failure.

My understanding of being present is changing. While I immensely dislike certain tasks throughout my day, I simply accept that I am uncomfortably bored by them. Maybe you can relate to that feeling of wanting to be anywhere but where you are. Maybe you understand that most of us will do all we can to avoid stillness at all costs.

As a personal self we have so many bad things that happen. We have endless future fears running a loop in our mind. There is so much fear. Peace seems impossible.

There is something within me that is driving me with such force, that I often only feel like I am along for the ride. I will someday fully accept that nothing bad has ever happened to me and that nothing bad will ever happen to me. It could be tomorrow, it could be next year or it could be decades in the making. I’m not in charge of the timeline. I don’t think I’ve ever admitted that out loud. I need to be reminded that I don’t have to try so very hard all day long, every day of my life. I’ll get there regardless. I still have to be willing and the force within me keeps that willingness alive, but I don’t have to make something happen that is not yet ready to unfold for me.

What are you trying to make happen?

Isn’t is SO MUCH WORK ALL THE TIME?

Maybe there’s important wisdom to be gleaned from exactly where we are at. Even if where we are is painful. Maybe the answer is within the pain. Maybe if I step back and breathe and let the pain be, maybe peace will come. I’m starting to realize that I’ve been labeling my struggle all wrong. Struggle is not the problem. Trying to micromanage the struggle only deepens and prolongs the pain.

A huge part of a spiritual awakening process, is aligning with your personality’s authenticity. While the eventual goal is to detach from the personal, while you are still in the process, you have to honor the Truth of your personal self. What this does is signal to your Mind that you are opening to the Higher Self within. Being your Truest tiny self is the gateway to your Holy Self.

As I hone my authenticity, I realize that more often than not, I hide from others. I am afraid to be this authentic self when I have an audience. I am too worried that I will make others uncomfortable or wind up in an awkward situtaion.

I am a deeply feeling person. I am introverted, intuitive, observant and empathic. I want to talk about the circumstances of my life that appear to be causing my internal stress (they are not). I want to chip away at my personal story to find the roots of my discomfort. I want to cry. I want to crack jokes. I want to be free.

There are so many times throughout my day that I am stalled in a conversation that feels so untrue that I feel like pulling my hair out. It seems like we are talking about something that is causing distress, but it feels off.

I have connected to the space between thoughts enough to know that we are never upset for the reason we think we are. The only source of our discomfort is that we believe we are separate from God.

We never left God.

God never left us.

It’s heartbreaking when we believe we are separate and alone. Thinking we have to conquer an impossible world by ourselves is hard. That’s a terrible story to live over and over.

I want to talk about it. I have almost convinced myself that I need to talk about it with others. I need to have my viewpoint validated to assure me I am on my way to spiritual freedom.

This is no more true than thinking I am separate from God.

No one is holding me back from authenticity.

Only I can do that to myself.

My joy and Truth are not suppressed.

I promise to give my best to each day, to be authentic as much as I’m able and learn the lesson that only I can lead me to where I need to go.

Life isn’t as hard as we make it. We often immerse ourselves so deeply in the personal self’s story, that we come to believe the personal self is our only avenue to peace.

This is not true.

Rearranging, changing, striving, acquiring are some of the ways we trick ourselves into believing that life will become sustainably satisfying.

Feeling unhappy?

Move to a different town.

Feeling frustrated?

Get a new job.

Feeling unfulfilled?

Set goals so you are always looking forward.

Feeling sad?

Buy yourself something new and shiny.

These are some of the ways we continuously look out into the world in search of that ineffable something that always seems out of grasp.

Why is the personal self and its life and its story so perpetually unfulfilling?

Because we are looking at everything backwards.

We are not happening to the world, the world is happening to us.

What does this mean?

We must train ourselves to look at our life and its particular curiosities as a means to turn inward. If something on the outside seems uncomfortable to us, this is our invitation to let go of this discomfort and turn our attention inward.

But why?

If we turn inward enough, eventually we will reach a tipping point. Let me be clear, you are going to be extremely and sometimes miserably uncomfortable in this process, but with enough time, pratice and patience, you will have moments where you can detach from this discomfort. In these jewel-filled instances, you will KNOW that all is right with the world, even when it appears that it isn’t.